Posted on 01.21.10

Apple Tablet: Death Eater to E-Readers?

by Stacy

Are you are one of the many who proverbially turned the page by switching to a Kindle for reading this past year? Well, by opening up the Kindle platform to third-party app developers, Amazon has made some significant efforts to remain competitive with Apple, its line of iPhones, and the much-rumored tablet that is supposedly…

Posted on 01.08.10

Architecture Meets Augmented Reality

by Tim Frick

Imagine if you could hold your iPhone up to a building and it would tell you not only what is inside the building such as stores, restaurants, and so on, but also who is in the building and what they are saying. What if it also gave you information on items inside the building that were on sale or what reservation times were free at your favorite restaurant? Well, an architecture firm in Tokyo has created a building in Tokyo that comes with its own iPhone app that puts all this information and more at your fingertips.

Posted on 01.07.10

Unfriended by Facebook?

by Stacy

Facebook Community Council: Citizen’s Patrol
Using users to monitor the facebooksphere for ‘ethically offensive material.’

I, for one, love Facebook. Yes, it has its glitches here and there and can quickly become like a DVR inbox of “to-friends” or “to communicate” lists, but all in all, it has eliminated the need for me to spend 30 minutes on the phone catching up with each friend every once in a while.

On-going privacy setting tweaks aren’t so bad, though it helps to stay on top of managing them for personal and business pages. Otherwise, all your posts and information could potentially go über-viral. At moments I do wonder if all my personal photos (and those taken of me in public venues) are tagged with deliciously insightful personal information and stored away on some server that could be purchased by the government one day (thank goodness I am pure and innocent).

Earlier this year, Facebook took some flack for not removing pages posted by the Holocaust Denial Movement. So when the social monolith announced its Facebook Community Council—whose goal…

Posted on 01.01.10

Smashing Book Review

by Tim Frick

Web design pundits Smashing Magazine’s foray into print publishing offers a great set of best practices and general design concepts invaluable to those on the interface side of creating websites. These folks have consistently offered content of exceptional quality since launching in September 2006 and this book stays true to the high standards for which they have become known. After waiting nearly two months for our copy of the book due, apparently, to some glitches in the overseas printing process, I can honestly say the wait was worth it.